#idk if this was intentional to show how forever is slowly becoming corrupt

[the-crimson]

Ok, I will say, completely divorced from the bbh v forever conflict, I have genuine criticisms of Forever’s voting in that it’s the second (of 3 idk how long the voting is open) day and most people on the server didn’t even know the voting was open again.

This isn’t neg at Forever or anything, it’s just an observation.

All the potential laws aren’t explained at all and are even mis represented in how little detail is given. Nerfing Lucky Ducks and waystones is the biggest example.

Etoiles doesn’t want to Nerf lucky ducks, he wants to make it so items you can get via exploring are not handed to the players without actually exploring to reincentivize players to explore and do dungeons. Etoiles wanted to replace these items with building blocks that are impossible to obtain rn since the end and nether are locked.

And the players don’t know what removing waystones would entail. Does that mean all teleportation is gone? Sharestones, warp plates, and warp stones? It’s incredibly vague which is a terrible way to vote for a law. The laws should be spelled out or else they can be warped into something people who voted for it didn’t actually want.

A super easy solution to this would be to deliver a book to all the players telling them the time the voting is open and give a brief description of all the proposed laws. It could literally be one - two pages max. Forever could leave it in a chest at everyone’s bases or cucurucho could deliver it to everyone when they come on once the voting is open - or even before the voting is open. That would solve this entire problem so easily.

I hope the next voting session they do that or something similar because rn it’s pretty bad that most of the people on the server found out about the vote through word of mouth instead of an official source and Etoiles had to explain what nerfing Lucky Ducks actually meant :/

[thecatsaesthetics]

Medici Season 3 Review

So I just want to say this, I love this show. It is by far my favorite Historical Drama to come out in... forever. I mean I’ve been dealing with shows like TWP and TSP so it isn’t that hard to beat, but I enjoyed it more then HBOs Catherine The Great which was amazing as well. But let's get into this review. 

Crime Family dynamic: honestly this was historical fiction meets The Godfather. Lorenzo was the perfect mob boss. I felt like this was what The Borgias was going for. Not saying The Borgias wasn’t a good show, but The Borgias promoted the show as “The original crime family” and I never got that vibe from the show. Lorenzo and the slow corruption arc after the loss of his brother hit me with major Michael vibes (who becomes corrupt after the loss of his wife). The Borgias was just “We’re corrupt, we know it, we’re okay with it”. Not that it was bad, but I never got Godfather vibes from it. This show gave me major Godfather vibes, there was even a baptism scene...

Clarice and Lorenzo: last time I said we didn’t get enough of them. Well, they upped their game here. I thoroughly enjoyed there dynamic this season. I loved the corruption and angst in the relationship. One of my favorite scenes was Clarice calling him out “A family built on what” and Lorenzo just standing there because he knows exactly what he’s become. That shit was hot and tragic. I loved making Clarice slowly corrupt herself in order to support Lorenzo. Every step Lorenzo made into darkness Clarice took as well. There was something so tragic about that. I loved the line “I’ve love you, I love you very much, for all the times I’ve hurt you”. Like damn... that’s angst and I love it. 

Future Pope Clement (I refuse to call him anything else sorry): I thought it was cool how they brought him in, historically it’s wrong but I thought it fit more with the show they built up. Historically he’s born after his father’s death, but in the last season Giulio isn’t really screwing around so that isn’t believable. Making him the result of years past makes more sense. Future Pope Clement forgiving the man who murdered his mother was the most powerful scene in the whole god damn show. I’m just gonna say it. That scene hit me more than any other scene. That scene was so intense, and the theme of forgiveness is the most powerful thing a person can do is a great theme. Also, him becoming a priest to keep his cousin company... adorable. 

Lucrezia’s death: I cried, her calling for Giulio... and her trying to stop it from happening again... I’m gonna start crying again. I can’t talk about that scene. 

Caterina Sforza: Adored her. I loved how they showed the complicated situation women were in. Being the wife of a brutal man and how she navigated the situation. Her conversation with Clarice was very interesting and showed just how little agency women had. While it’s historically inaccurate, I fucking loved her getting to murder Riario... the scene “I would have made you my Queen” and her saying “Yes, but I would have been your Queen”...I mean I loved it so much. That line was great, up there with Margaery Tyrell saying “I want to be the Queen”. 

Savonarola: I’m not really a fan of the “My friend becomes my enemy” storyline but I think they did a good job with it here. Lorenzo’s biggest mistake in the entire series was giving Savonarola power. It led to his downfall and his entire family. I thought they made Savonarola very nuanced and I enjoyed his final meeting with Lorenzo. You can really see the disgust he has for Lorenzo on his face. I’m not sure if we’re supposed to believe he always actually felt this way or grew to have a huge disgust for Lorenzo as time went on. 

Bruno Bernardi: Ummm... I didn’t like it. First of all, I don’t think he was a real person (at least I haven’t been able to discover he was) and think he was meant to be a collection of people. To make it short historically Lorenzo while being a political mastermind trusted a bunch of idiots. All of these idiots led the bank to eventually collapse upon itself. So I’m guessing that's who Bernardi is based on. I also have issues with the idea that it was Bernardi who corrupted Lorenzo they pulled at the end. 

Clarice’s death: Discussed a bit already but I didn’t like it. I mean I just thought it was a bit... stupid. Lorenzo and Lucrezia both get actual illness discussed but Clarice dies because... Lorenzo’s being evil shocked her? Idk, I guess they hinted she was ill but never discussed what she was ill with. I guess they wanted a bait and switch with her but it’s a historical tv show I can look up when she died. I loved her death scene with Lorenzo, but I wish they had actually discussed or giving more backstory about her death. I might be a bit too into Star Wars but it reminded me of Padme’s “She lost the will to live” shit. I don’t like those kinds of storylines. 

Bianca coming back: No why... I fucking could not and never liked Biance. She should have just stayed in the countryside with her stupid Pazzi husband. The only reason they had her there was because they needed Lorenzo to have a woman with him in the last episode. 

Piero: Ummm Idk what we were supposed to think of him. At one point he was telling Savonarola that he won’t tolerate him once he becomes head of the family and then the next he’s like “I can’t let dad kill him”. Maybe they wanted us to view him as a character who couldn’t make up his mind, hinting at why he was such a shit leader. But idk, it seemed rather rushed to me. 

Lorenzo’s death: I’m conflicted because I have seen people say it’s a “redemption” and I get that but I didn’t view it that way. Personally, I saw it as Lorenzo coming to terms with the things he had done and knowing that it wasn’t all bad or done with bad intentions. I think they meant the ending to be bittersweet, that they created art and culture but had sacrificed their souls to do it. At the same time, I don’t think they actually focused enough on the art Lorenzo sponsored in order to get that message to hit home. 

Overall I enjoyed the show but I do feel it was very condensed, especially at the end. I think the show should have gotten three full seasons of just Lorenzo. While I do enjoy the first season if I had to choose between it or getting three full seasons of Lorenzo, I’d chose the latter. I also wish they would have focused a bit more on the bank and how it was failing. I just listened to a podcast on The Rise and Fall of the Medici Bank and it’s interesting. The show itself could be seen as just about that, the rise and fall of the bank. Cause the Medici’s do come back and a secondary branch rules Florence until the 1700s. But I don’t actually think the show was about that, it was about the rise and fall of the bank. The bank rose under Cosimo and was destroyed under Lorenzo. Italy banking, in general, is lost during the late 1400s and German banking rose to prominence. But going back to point 9 out of 10 stars for me. I loved it and if you’re a fan of historical fiction you will too. 

[swanwinged-princess]

hsdf idk how to start this off but basically i’m gonna do some worldbuilding and also some editing to my main verse

i’m gonna separate it into two main offshoot-timelines, one taking place within the events of the prince & the raven, where she is adopted and raised by siegfried’s family, and another one where she’s.. not.

generally speaking, the difference between these two timelines is, in the first one (the main-main verse, i guess you could say), Schwanensee only consists of the sacred island in the center of the Swan King’s lake, and is really only a ‘kingdom’ in name because the inhabitants are all only the royal family (extended up to like 3rd cousins). 

(the ‘royal family’ was originally more of a sacred priest/sage bloodline, but evolved over the years into more of a leadership role, so they started calling them royal.)

in the other one, Schwanensee consists of the lake, the island and a good portion of the land around the lake- not a very big kingdom, but enough to be counted as a kingdom. 

In this verse, the actual royal family had retreated to the sacred island for several generations, leaving the nth-time-removed cousins who didn’t inherit the holy bloodline powers to run the actual kingdom. this decision was probably made to protect the empowered members of the royal family from got/tudors-style royal murder intrigue, or something like that.

However, that probably backfired because within like, one-and-a-half generations the regent side of the family started to abuse their powers- under the table, of course, but basically they became the actual kings/queens in all but name, and kept the distant concept of the actual royals on the sacred island over the heads of the citizens as sort of a threat, like ‘oh you think we’re not fit to manage this country? would you say that to the royal family’s face?’ or ‘oh the harvest has been poor this year and maybe there might not be enough food for all of you this year but just keep a stiff upper lip and think of the royal family, they’re praying for us or something’

this is also going into OC territory here but in Tutu’s time, the main-- magistrate, minister, regent, what-have-you-- is her several-times-removed cousin who is the perfect golden child on the surface; all glasses-pushing-up and theatrically clumsy and bookish and all smiles and etc., etc., but- of course- you can’t judge a book by its cover. 

When Tutu was rescued from the wreckage of the sacred island, he was somewhere in the 12-14 age range, while Tutu was 5, and his father was actually the magistrate/regent/whatever-the-fuck. 

The aforementioned father was almost CARTOONISHLY corrupt- like, not subtle about it at ALL, there were crying children in the streets while he was eating 3 whole roasted pheasants at a time up in the castle and all that stuff. You know how it be. 

He made a big show about having rescued the princess, who is ALSO the daughter of this kingdom’s like LITERAL GOD, and how he was going to raise her and protect her as if she was his own, this was a miracle, etc. etc. but really his plan was to raise her and spoil her absolutely rotten to make her more of a figurehead to wave from balconies and for all intents and purposes be under his thumb/so vapid she has no thoughts of her own. 

It worked out pretty well for the first few years because she was a traumatized child, but she started having her own thoughts and opinions at about 7 years old, which also coincided with when the current magistrate started coming down with a case of Ye Olde Consumption or something like that- after a long, painful illness he- of course- died, and his son, Name TBD, became the next one. Almost immediately, he basically turned the kingdom from cartoonishly-poor-and-obviously-run-by-a-villain to actually-an-okay-place-to-live. 

Not because he actually wanted to help or anything, but the peasants had been getting restless and there was a high probability that they would have actually staged a revolution sooner rather than later. That obviously gave him points from the citizens, and it was a lot easier to continue doing his corrupt activities under the table when starving people weren’t pounding on the castle walls yelling. 

He was actively a lot nicer to Tutu- for one, actually talking to her like she was a person, and letting her do things she wanted, to a reasonable degree, because, like, she’s only a little kid and anyway it’d be a lot easier to control her/get her to do things YOU want from her if she likes you. 

He only started getting worried when most of the things SHE wanted to do were to actively help the citizens, and then of course the entire kingdom basically started falling in love with her in a ‘our princess is also our literal messiah and she’s so kind and beautiful i can’t wait for her to be queen’-type sense, and that only grew when she started using LITERAL HOLY MAGIC to heal sick children or cure blight on a field of crops. At first he was like ‘okay i can work with this’ but as she got older she also started getting more involved in the kingdom’s actual politics and managing, and undoing literal generations of corrupt money-funneling and keeping-the-masses-ignorant and so on and so forth, completely unaware the whole time that they were anything more than clerical errors in the contracts and paperwork. 

So at this point he’s like ‘...ah fuck, this kid is actually smart and altruistic and literally beloved by all, this could ruin EVERYTHING and what’s gonna happen to my side of the family when she gets married and/or becomes queen, which is eventually gonna happen because she’s beautiful and every half-bit noble from lords to full-on emperors are probably gonna want to marry THE CHILD OF AN ACTUAL GOD at the very least for bragging points if nothing else.

So for one he changes the age of her coronation from 18 to 21, but that’s not gonna solve the problem forever, so I’m not saying he started actively conspiring against her- extremely low-key, of course- but that’s basically exactly what I’m saying. 

For one, he only arranges meetings with, like, the most obnoxious possible suitors- the French-royal, powdered-wig types, or the dickhead playboy pinches-girls’-butts types, or the straight-up just like actual marauding Viking kings or something- the ones that she would NEVER even give the time of DAY to, and disguises his actual intent in having her reject all of them by ‘of course i would never FORCE my dear cousin to marry against her will, women- even princesses- are PEOPLE, you know’ like. wow. so progressive. 

Also, while it’s true that some of the perils she faces are naturally borne from being a) a princess in a fantasy setting and b) the only child of an evil deity’s sworn enemy, who has powers that actively destroy his powers and minions, approximately, like, a FOURTH of them were probably more like ‘somebody got slipped a bag of gold to try and get the princess’s horse to run off a cliff’ or ‘hey coachman why don’t we take a detour through these woods known to be the territory of violent bandits/dangerous magical beasts/etc., it’s probably fine if we go fast’

They’ve all failed up to this point because. Hey. Heroine plot armor, dawg. That shit be TOUGH. 

They also probably won’t- or wouldn’t- turn into literal assassination attempts until she starts getting closer to her 21st birthday, but they do probably slowly ramp up in intensity the older she gets. There’s also a high probability that Name TBD would actually ally himself with the Monster Raven, or at least some of his human cultists and/or his horrible children to either kill Tutu or get her out of the way somehow (coughcough COR cough. absolutely irredeemable creep REALLY wants to ‘have’ her. Gross on so many levels.)

.....yeah man that’s basically all i have *dabs*